Stuff I want to make

I'm in the mood for holiday crafting.  If the mention of Christmas wreaths, tree skirts, ornaments, and handmade gifts before Thanksgiving makes you stabby, then you might want to skip this post.  But those who make things know that you have to start early or you won't have the tree up by Christmas and the stockings will be empty.  This year I'd like to make a wreath for the door.  I've seen a few things on the interwebs that I've liked.

this one is made from Rosemary

made from paper

paper again

and another one from paper

and I loved this card wreath using clothes pins and what looks like a giant embroidery hoop

I'm going to attempt to make one of the Rosemary wreaths.  I want to use things I have and I don't want to purchase anything to make my wreath.  I have Rosemary.  All of our newspaper subscriptions are now online, so I can't make a paper wreath from newspaper, but it is possible that I could make one from handmade paper because Morgan and I have been collecting things to make paper with, not to mention our large bag of dryer lint, for some time.  There are a number of paper wreath tutorials online.  Here's a good one from Blue Cricket Design: 

http://www.bluecricketdesign.net/2010/07/paper-wreath-tutorial-by-lovely-paper.html

Next time I'll be talking about balls.  Big, blingy Christmas balls. 

 In the meantime, some of you know that I've had this wall in my living room that has driven me crazy for some time.  I've tried all different sorts of arrangements of photographs or paintings on this wall and never liked the look.  I finally figured out that since there was nothing, like a piece of furniture, in front of the wall, the whole space needed to be covered with either a very large piece of art or many smaller pieces of art that looked right with each other.   One day I was tidying up in my art room and noticed that I'd collected quite a few picture frames over the past 20 years.  Hmmm.  I didn't necessarily have things to go in the frames, but the frames themselves could be used to fill that wall space pretty nicely.  To pull everything together,  I painted the frames with the paint I'd bought six months ago to touch up the molding.  Here's how the wall looks now: 

Immune system finally crashes

It was bound to happen.  My immune system remained strong through seven chemo treatments, then after the eighth one, it plummeted.  (Last week, my white and red blood cell count was lower than normal.  A lack of white blood cells is called leukopenia, caused by chemotherapy in my case. A lack of red blood cells, more familiar to most of us, is anemia.)  So on Tuesday,  I waited about 45 minutes to find out if I was even going to have an infusion.  In the end I did, but my oncologist decided I had to return the next day, and for the next two days after that, for a Neupogen injection to help my body manufacture more white blood cells.  Neupogen is a man-made protein that stimulates the growth of white blood cells.  Unfortunately, it also caused my joints and bones to ache and also may have given me a whopper of a headache that lasted until Sunday.  The lovely headache returned today and I don't know if it's caused by the Neupogen or by having a low red blood cell count.  Since the red cells move oxygen through the body, too few red cells could have been the problem.  


I have chemo tomorrow so I'll find out what my counts are.   In the meantime to help me grow more red blood cells, I'm having some seriously delicious Stella-made grass-fed beef meatloaf, broccoli, and a green salad.  Cheers!